The Iranian Embassy siege took place from 30 April to 5 May 1980, after a group of six armed men stormed the Iranian embassy in London. The gunmen, members of an Iranian Arab group campaigning for Arab national sovereignty in Khūzestān Province, took 26 hostages and demanded the release of Arab prisoners from jails in Khūzestān. Police negotiators gradually secured the release of five hostages in exchange for minor concessions. On the sixth day the gunmen, frustrated at the lack of progress, killed a hostage and threw his body out of the embassy. The British government ordered the Special Air Service (SAS), a special forces regiment, to rescue the hostages. During the 17-minute raid, the SAS rescued all but one of the remaining hostages, and killed five of the gunmen. The hostage-takers and their cause were largely forgotten afterwards, but the operation brought the SAS to public attention. It was overwhelmed by the number of applications it received from people inspired by the operation and experienced greater demand for its expertise from foreign governments. The building suffered major damage from fire (aftermath pictured) and did not reopen as the embassy until 1993.

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Embassy_siege

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1006:

SN 1006 (remnant pictured), the brightest supernova in recorded history, first appeared in the constellation Lupus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SN_1006

1636:

Eighty Years' War: Dutch Republic forces recaptured a strategically important fort from Spain after a nine-month siege. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Schenkenschans

1982:

Sixteen monks and a nun belonging to Ananda Marga in Calcutta, India, were dragged out of taxis by persons unknown in three different locations, beaten to death and then set on fire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bijon_Setu_massacre

1993:

Monica Seles, the number-one ranked women's tennis player at the time, was stabbed in the back during a match by a man obsessed with her rival Steffi Graf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monica_Seles

2004:

The New Yorker magazine posted an article and supporting pictures online, postdated May 10, detailing accounts of torture and abuse by American personnel of prisoners held at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisoner_abuse

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

capacious: Having a lot of space inside; roomy. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/capacious

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

There are problems to whose solution I would attach an infinitely greater importance than to those of mathematics, for example touching ethics, or our relation to God, or concerning our destiny and our future; but their solution lies wholly beyond us and completely outside the province of science.   --Carl Friedrich Gauss https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Carl_Friedrich_Gauss